Laboratoire Ville Mobilité Transport

The Logistics City Chair is dedicated to research on urban logistics with a focus on two scientific topics: a first area focusing on urban and peri-urban logistics real estate; a second area focusing on trends and new consumer practices and their impact on urban logistics and its real estate. It was launched June 2019 and is a partnership between University Gustave Eiffel (UPEM and IFSTTAR), Sogaris and Poste-Immo.

The description of the field of study and the scientific program of the Chair were the subject of a white paper on new urban logistics entitled “Welcome to Logistics City”. The second issue of Welcome To Logistics City was published in June 2021, on e-commerce, its mobilities and its impacts on the city.

The Chaire launched an observatory that discusses the state-of-the-art on business-to-consumer e-commerce developments, its stakeholders, mobilities and warehousing: E-commerce Mobilities Observatory.

News of the Chair

  • Newsletter #4 of the Logistics City chair – October 21, 2021
  • Second issue of Welcome To Logistics City: e-commerce mobilities and the impacts on cities
  • Article: E-commerce and its impact on cities: logistics transformations in the shadows (in French)
  • Report: the fourth round of surveys on instant delivery micro-entrepreneurs in Paris

Future interventions

  • BIVEC-GIBET, Octobre 8, 2021: presentation “The impact of COVID-19 on urban logistics” by Heleen Buldeo Rai
  • Rencontres Transports et Mobilités, Octobre 19, 2021: round table “Quelle place pour les marchandises dans la ville ?” with Laetitia Dablanc
  • Office for Science and Technology of the Embassy of France in the United States, Octobre 26, 2021: webinar “Cities of Tomorrow” with Laetitia Dablanc

Recent interventions

  • Fédération Nationale des Agences d’Urbanisme, September 23, 2021: presentation “Tour d’horizon des méthodes à explorer pour obtenir des données supplémentaires sur la mobilité urbaine des marchandises” by Laetitia Dablanc
  • Centre for Transportation and Logistics, September 15, 2021: presentation and webinar “The Impact of COVID-19 on Urban Logistics” by Laetitia Dablanc
  • SITL, September 14, 2021: round table “Comment mieux responsabiliser le consommateur face aux enjeux de la logistique urbaine ?” by Laetitia Dablanc
  • Fédération des Usagers de la Bicyclette, July 4, 2021: presentation “Vélo et logistique” by Laetitia Dablanc
  • Forum Vies Mobiles, June 24, 2021: conference “Quel avenir pour les livreurs de repas à vélo ?”
  • LabEx, June 15, 2021: round table “Des futurs urbains post-mobiles ?”
  • ABRALOG/AFILOG webinar, June 3, 2021: round table “One year after – what impact Covid has had on logistics?”
  • Annales des Mines, June 9, 2021: round table “Réponses numériques à la crise sanitaire”
  • Urbanism Next Europe 2021, June 10, 2021: round table “The urgency to integrate city logistics in urban planning for livable cities of the future”
  • Les Echos, June 3, 2021: Article “Deliveroo, Uber Eats : qui se cache derrière le livreur de repas parisien ?”
  • Seminar of research group SPLOTT, May 10, 2021: Presentation “Relationships among urban characteristics, real estate market and spatial patterns of warehouses in different geographic contexts”
  • e-SMART, April 22, 2021: Presentation “Enjeux et solutions pour la logistique urbaine : Tour d’horizon des bonnes pratiques internationales et focus sur les données”
  • Cap Digital, April 1st, 2021: Presentation “Les mobilités du e-commerce”

Chair description

New concepts, new urban logistics companies are emerging in Asia, Europe, and the United States, and more recently in all urban regions of the world, driven by digital revolutions. This logistic aims to meet the demand of urban companies and consumers for new services while providing solutions to cities’ concerns about the environmental and social impacts of current urban deliveries.

For cities with efficient urban logistics (such as Tokyo) that integrate logistics facilities into very dense urban areas or “intelligent” neighbourhood logistics, there are still less central districts and many large cities in the world whose congestion and emissions related to freight transport remain at far too high levels, while social issues (jobs and working conditions) are becoming more acute.

The Logistics City Chair is part of this context, with a specific dual ambition:

  • To pay particular attention, especially through the disciplines of urban planning and development, to the question of crucial logistical locations for urban and metropolitan areas such as warehouses.
  • To explore the impact of new consumption and distribution trends on urban logistics and the territories, particularly those related to e-commerce and more generally to digital transformations. Working in the Île-de-France region and having comparative perspective, data will be collected and developments in major world cities will be identified.

We will aim to increase knowledge while ensuring that we provide methodological tools to public and private actors in urban logistics, to contribute to the development of public policies on freight mobility, the energy transition of the sector, new logistics real estate and employment.

Chair governance 

Policy and evaluation committee

  • Jonathan Sebbane, General Director and President of the Chair Policy and evaluation committee, Sogaris
  • Rémi Féredj, General Director, Poste-Immo
  • Serge Piperno, Scientific Director, Université Gustave Eiffel
  • Muriel Jougleux, Vice-President Partnerships and Professionalisation, Université Gustave Eiffel
  • Claude Samson, President, AFILOG
  • Julien Aldhuy, Senior Lecturer, Université Paris Est Créteil
  • Marion Waller, Advisor to the Mayor of Paris, in charge of Architecture, Preservation and Landscape
  • Susana Val, Director, MIT Europe, Zaragoza Logistics Centre
  • Olivier Storch, Executive Vice President, Asia-Pacific & Americas, GeoPost
  • Cécile Maisonneuve, President, La Fabrique de la Cité
  • Adeline Heitz, Lecturer, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
  • Nathalie Granes, Department Head, Ile-de-France Region
  • François Combes, Laboratory Director SPLOTT, University Gustave Eiffel
  • Pierre Zembri, Laboratory Director LVMT, University Gustave Eiffel

Steering committee

  • Laetitia Dablanc, Director of research and director of the Chair, University Gustave Eiffel
  • Heleen Buldeo Rai, Post-doc, University Gustave Eiffel
  • Matthieu Schorung, post-doctoral researcher
  • Sandrine Wenglenski, Lecturer, University Gustave Eiffel
  • Sonia Samadi, Director of development and innovation, Sogaris
  • Jean-Louis Boudol, Director of urban logistics projects, Poste-Immo
  • Juliette Berthon, Head of development and innovation Sogaris

The Logistics City Chair is dedicated to research on urban logistics, with a focus on two scientific axes:

THEME 1. Urban logistics real estate, new economic models for metropolitan logistics real estate, strategies for the implementation of logistics buildings in large metropolises.

OBJECTIVES:

  • Logistics sprawl and urban logistics: analysis of territorial dynamics linked to the evolution of the location of logistics activities, at the “macro” level
  • Urban logistics planning: analysis of public policies, the history of the production of the first buildings, the economic paradox of urban logistics and regulatory obstacles, at the “micro” level

RESEARCH RESULTS:

  • Report part 1 and part 2: Diagnosis of the logistics real estate of the Grand Paris Seine Ouest and its development prospects, by students of the M1 of the École d’Urbanisme de Paris (in French)
  • Presentation: Relationships among urban characteristics, real estate market and spatial patterns of warehouses in different geographic contexts, by Renata de Oliveira, Matthieu Schorung and Laetitia Dablanc
  • Presentation: Locational patterns of warehouses in 74 cities around the world, a comparative meta-analysis, by Laetitia Dablanc and Laura Palacios-Argüello
  • Dissertation: Logistics in the restructuring of an urban boulevard, the case of the RD932 project, by Gaëtan-Max Jayle (in French)
  • Dissertation: Study of the logistical dimension of the local urban plan (PLU) of Paris, by Damien Zachert (in French) 
  • Report: Study on intermediate logistics real estate in the inner suburbs (“la petite couronne”), the case of the Est Ensemble territory, by students of the M1 of the École d’Urbanisme de Paris (in French)

THEME 2. Trends and new practices in consumption, production and distribution impacting on urban logistics and warehousing of the future, in a prospective vision.

 

OBJECTIVES:

  • On the one hand, the collection of data and indicators for several major cities (including Paris) relating to the flows generated by new forms of e-commerce
  • On the other hand, the analysis of their potential impacts, in particular through interviews with and observations of e-commerce and logistics players in case studies

RESEARCH RESULTS:

  • Scientific paper on assessing the net environmental impact of online shopping, by Heleen Buldeo Rai
  • Dissertation and overview of initiatives on autonomous vehicles : Autonomous delivery vehicles, a solution for the future?, by Sabrina Touami (in French)
  • Article: E-commerce and its impact on cities: logistics transformations in the shadows, by Heleen Buldeo Rai and Laetitia Dablanc (in French)
  • Article: E-commerce: towards the automation of urban goods transport?, by Heleen Buldeo Rai and Sabrina Touami (in French)
  • Article: Autonomous Vehicles for Urban Deliveries, by Heleen Buldeo Rai, Sabrina Touami and Laetitia Dablanc

Barometer of urban logistics in lockdown

The Logistics City chair has launched, with the support of the City of Paris, an initiative to increase knowledge and awareness of the situation of the urban logistics sector in times of lockdown:

Surveys on instant delivery micro-entrepreneurs in Paris

  • Report: the first (2016) and second (2018) round of surveys (in French)
  • Report: the third (2019-2020) round of surveys (in French)
  • Report: the fourth (2021) round of surveys (in French)

Training courses of the Logistics City Chair

The Chair supports student workshops in several university programs, for more information please contact: Laetitia Dablanc (laetitia.dablanc@univ-eiffel.fr).

Scientific communication, dissemination of knowledge and valorisation 

For more information, visit the French Twitter page and the English Twitter page of the chaire, as well as our LinkedIn page.

The Chaire launched an observatory that discusses the state-of-art on business-to-consumer e-commerce developments, its stakeholders, mobilities and warehousing: the e-commerce mobilities Observatory.

Dissemination of knowledge and valorisation

The description of the field of study and the scientific program of the Chair were the subject of a white paper on new urban logistics entitled “Welcome to Logistics City”, available here.

The Chair participated to the VREF Conference on Urban Freight 2021, organised online this year. Link to the presentation of Laetitia Dablanc on urban logistics in times of COVID-19 and the presentation of Heleen Buldeo Rai on e-commerce data in urban logistics research.

Interventions of the chair

Discover the results of the third survey of instant delivery micro-entrepreneurs in Paris

The report, accessible via this link (in French), aims to present the exhaustive results collected during the survey that was carried out by the Gustave Eiffel University/IFSTTAR with the help of the 6T research office in December 2019/January 2020 on a sample of 300 “instant delivery” workers in Eastern Paris. This survey, financed by DGITM, Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition and the Logistics City Chair, is the third on the subject.

Antwerp Summer School on Urban Logistics (17 – 21 August 2020)

Academic circles as well as governments have only grown the focus on urban logistics in recent years. This is because, on the one hand, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas and they account for 70% of total GDP worldwide (UN, 2017). On the other hand, the urban logistics that brings the goods to these consumers and economic activities causes 20-30% of the total number of kilometers driven and 16-50% of the emissions in these areas (Dablanc, 2007). Therefore, planning and managing the urban transport is key for a sustainable development of cities. These form the topic of the second Urban Logistics Summer School. For more information, visit the summer school’s website.

Webinar “Complete Streets: Finding Space for Freight”

During this time of enormous growth in on-demand e-commerce, freight travel behavior patterns are distinct and rapidly evolving, generating unique demands for on- and even off-street space. Long term, as cities around the world adopt a “complete streets” approach, freight must be considered. By redesigning streets to allocate street and curbside space for transit and non-motorized travel, these cities are establishing how best to maintain a safe and efficient movement of goods while keeping pedestrians and cyclists safe. During the webinar which is accessible via this link, Alison Conway reviews challenges identified in a survey of cities around the U.S. and discusses international best practices to approach design, regulations, operations, and demand management for freight.

Find many research results in urban freight in Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Seoul: the Metrofreight center

MetroFreight (MF) is a consortium led by the METRANS Transportation Center and housed at the University of Southern California that whose main mission is to develop innovative strategies to manage urban freight and its impacts that are transferable to metropolitan areas around the world. The MetroFreight team is multidisciplinary, with particular strength in planning and public policy. French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (IFFSTAR) at Gustave Eiffel University is one of the consortium members since 2013. For further details please visit: https://www.metrans.org/metrofreight

Reports from the Transportation Research Board

The annual Transportation Research Board (TRB) meeting took place in Washington, D.C. from January 12th until January 16th. The program attracted more than 13.000 transportation professionals from around the world, covering all transportation modes and addressing topics of interest to policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers and representatives of government, industry and academic institutions. A report of the “Freight Day” session on “Sustainable and Efficient Solutions for Last Mile Distribution”, organized by Bilge Atasoy and Laetitia Dablanc can be found here. Attached as well are Laetitia Dablanc’s presentations on on-demand instant delivery services and recent trends in last mile logistics solutions around the world.

Photography exhibition « On n’est pas des robots », on workers in logistics

This exhibition presents the photography work that Cécile Cuny, Nathalie Mohadjer and Hortense Soichet realised within a collective research project on “the world of workers in logistics”. The exhibition takes place in Maison Robert Doisneau in Gentilly as from February 21st until April 19th 2020 (vernissage February 20th as from 18:00). Entry is free of charge. The photographs on display in this exhibition are based on a three-year study bringing together photography and sociology, as part of a contract between the urban planning laboratory of the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée and photography artists.

On est pas des robots

The Chair also interacts with the international scientific community at ITS World Congress 2019 in Singapore: 

  • The report of the visit to the Singapore Post Regional Logistics Centre (SingPost) is available here.
  • Roundtable report on urban logistics is available  here.

Laetitia Dablanc’s speech at the annual meeting of logistics experts from Berlin and Brandenburg on the theme of rail and urban logistics, 21 November 2019. The presentation is available here.

A Film on Deliveries in New York City

“City Tour. The Everyday Life of Delivery Workers in New York City”, 2019 (1h32) by Sandrine Wenglenski, assistant professor at Université Paris-Est Marne-La-Vallée.

In New York City, deliveries to commercial properties and home deliveries are booming and generate an unprecedented context. The film aims to present the concrete terms and conditions of the delivery work, the ordinary tasks, and the practical organization of this daily performance, throughout four portraits of today’s delivery workers in the dense area of New York.

Project funded by University of Paris-East (Research Unit “City, Mobility, Transport”, LVMT) and Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (MetroFreight Paris).

Available online upon request to sandrine.wenglenski@u-pem.fr

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